Now HSBC’s chief economist, Stephen King (yes, the other Stephen King) has stepped into the argument. In an article in today’s Guardian he says:

The new reality is, I’m afraid, a world of significantly lower growth, where the gap between our expectations and actual income is getting bigger day by day. Neither Keynesians nor austerians have an answer to this sober outlook because both sides claim their own policies will ultimately take us back to a world of rapidly advancing living standards.

Our view is that ‘the low growth economy’ is, at the least, a plausible scenario, and that, like all plausible scenarios, businesses that prepare for it will do better than those that don’t. Even if it doesn’t happen, exploring the world of low-growth will throw out new insights about consumers and markets. If it does happen, businesses that have prepared for it will gain a competitive edge.

And it turns out that looking at economies through the lens of the headwinds we explore in the report throws up some stretching questions about how we do business – and new innovation ideas – as indicated by the summary graphic of the story.